Tuesday, April 7, 2015

A Hunt Through the Civil War

In this lesson, we learned about the individual battles in the civil war. We created a scavenger hunt with each stop being a different battle in chronological order. Every person picked a battle, with some partnerships, and made Google docs for them. Everyone started at different points and as we all got to them we had to scan a QR code to access the doc. We included a picture, general information about the battle, and some details about why the victor, either the Union or Confederacy, won. This required us to do research on our chosen battle. I chose the last battle which was called the Appomattox Campaign. After the scavenger hunt, we used the information we collected to determine which side dominated in each of the three theaters, east, west, and naval. We all shared our thoughts about it on a website called padlet.

On the padlet we determined that the union dominated in the naval theater. They were more supplied with ships than the Confederacy. They were also receiving more reinforcements and were able to have a stronger army that could last longer in battle, as shown in the surrender of Fort Donelson. The Union army overpowered the Confederacy and used a strategy to surround their troops and force them to surrender. Also, at Fort Henry the Unionwon because they had more ships that were stronger in battle. The Union also dominated in the western theater for most of the same reasons. They were more supplied than the Confederacy so they were able to be more prepared for the battles. The Union also had a larger population in the west than the Confederacy. At the Battle of Shiloh, the Union was able to win because they outnumbered the Confederate troops. Concerning the eastern theater, the Confederacy had dominated at the beginning of the war, but the Union started to dominate in the second half of it. This was mainly due to the Union's lack of strong leadership in the first half of the war. At the Battle of Bull Run, the Union troops were not as prepared and they were slow to positioning. This caused the Confederacy to win. The leader of the Union troops at the beginning disagreed with Lincoln about their strategy. Once Ulysses S. Grant became the leader, the Union began to dominate.